SQL Saturday 125 OKC

This weekend I traveled three hours north to Oklahoma City to participate in SQL Saturday 125, the second annual event hosted by the OKCSQL group. Ryan Adams, Russ Loski, John Sterrett and I hit the road midafternoon to give ourselves time to make it in time for the speaker dinner on Friday evening. I’ve made several trips before with Ryan and Russ, and was my first such trip with John, a recent Texas transplant from West Virginia (and still a Pittsburg Pirates fan, though I try not to hold that against him). This was my second trip to OKC in about a year, having taken part in their inaugural SQL Saturday event last summer as well.

The event was again held at the Moore-Norman Technology Center, which worked out to be an excellent venue for the event. The facility functions by day as a technical training center, so naturally it was well equipped for a SQL Saturday. Breakfast and lunch were both provided, and coffee and bottled water were both available for much of the day. Other than a flaky projector in one of the rooms, I didn’t see any significant logistical issues.

I was invited to deliver an introductory-level session entitled “Top 10(ish) New Features in SSIS in SQL 2012”. I had a smallish crowd, maybe 30-35 people or so, perhaps due to the fact that it was the last session of the day and I was in the same time slot as the popular Joe Celko. The session turned out to be more conversational than I’m used to, which worked out fine – a couple of attendees brought up specific questions from their environments, and one even pointed out something I didn’t know about SSIS script debugging (more on that in a future post). I got back 15 evaluation forms, with all marking a score of 5 (on a scale of 1-5). For those who attended and would like to download the presentation materials, I’ve posted my slide deck and code here.